The (In)Conspicuous Narrator in Virginia Woolf’s works

Prof. Evelyn Chan
Associate Professor
Department of English
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

***All are welcome***

Abstract:
Going from Jacob’s Room, considered Virginia Woolf’s first modernist novel, to Mrs Dalloway, what strikes the reader is the abrupt shift from a very prominent and outspoken narrator to a deliberately inconspicuous one in the latter novel and subsequently in To the Lighthouse. Using the concept of “emotional labor” by Arlie Russell Hochschild, this talk explores the narrator’s strategies for managing the expression of her emotions across these and other works by Woolf, and how her stronger “emotional labor” in works such as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse help consolidate the novels’ artistic status.

Bio:
Evelyn Chan is Associate Professor in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her publications include Virginia Woolf and the Professions (2014, Cambridge University Press), The Humanities in Contemporary Chinese Contexts (2016, Springer; as a contributor and co-editor), and The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education: Perspectives from Hong Kong (2020, Springer; as primary author). Her primary research and teaching interests are in literary representations of work and of education, and in philosophical issues arising from such representations.